The US quickly turned Russia’s February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine into a US proxy war against Russia. But decades prior, US anti Russian provocations, expanding NATO relentlessly up to Russia’s borders, and overturning a Russian leaning Ukraine government, initiated that proxy war upon the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The road to invasion escalated in 2008 when the US floated NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia. That was a red line of provocation to Russia they’ve been warning us to withdraw now for 14 years.
The past eight, beginning with the US inspired and supported coup against Russian leaning Ukraine president Victor Yanukovych in 2014, have been a virtual demand by the West for Russia to attack. That was because it unleashed a civil war between the new central government and Russian speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas. To unify Ukraine under a pro West, anti Russian national identity, the Donbas Ukrainians were brutalized, indeed murdered by the US brokered anti-Russian government elevated to power by that coup. Coupled with the threat of NATO placing weapons and troops on Russia’s borders, Russia framed the crisis as an existential threat they decided, after years of warning, to defend against.
This makes current US support for Ukraine simply a continuation of the proxy war against Russia going back to that 2014 coup. Rather than save Ukraine lives, it sentences thousands more to a needless death so the US can inflict a defeat upon Russia.
A sensible policy would promote negotiations to achieve a neutral, NATO free Ukraine to protect Russia’s borders, and autonomy for Donbas to end Ukraine central government warfare upon those beleaguered Ukrainians.
The people of European NATO countries and the US understand this, which explains their Ukraine war fatigue. They understand the war has no connection to their national self-interests, nor that of any other country outside of Ukraine. They further realize Ukraine could easily have avoided attack had they simply rejected NATO overtures and refrained from waging war against their own people on Russia’s border.
Indeed, the now likely endless proxy war driving up gas, food and other prices results from their governments boxing them into a war that can’t be won short of nuclear destruction, much less one that should not have been provoked in the first place.
The sensible citizenry will never heed the false claims of their governments which have squandered their credibility with lies, erasure of pertinent facts and hysteria of a new Hitler, Stalin world conqueror to eradicate.
Western citizen Ukraine war fatigue is here to stay. Time for Ukraine war fatigue to reach US and Western European governments to set up the negotiating table for sensible, compromise fostering diplomacy.
Walt Zlotow became involved in antiwar activities upon entering University of Chicago in 1963. He is current president of the West Suburban Peace Coalition based in the Chicago western suburbs. He blogs daily on antiwar and other issues at www.heartlandprogressive.blogspot.com.
